by Cody Hodge

Created on: February 21, 2009

The relevance and importance of someones world-view has been what has shaped the history of mankind. If it wasn't for the assumption that a trade route to the West Indies was easier to achieve going west, where would the US be today? If it wasn't for the assumption that Europeans were better than the Native Americans, what kind of country would the US be today? If it wasn't for the fact that some people believed that race made one group of people superior to another, what kind of country could we be today?

What do all three of those examples have in common? All three events in world history happened because of one group having a world view that enabled them to believe what they believed in. Columbus thought that the world was smaller than it was, and he also thought he could go west to get to the trade routes of the Indies. He was so steadfast in his world-view that he was not going to change anything in his voyage, and luckily he stumbled upon the Bahamas.

When the Europeans first came to America, they were pretty sure that they were better than the Natives merely because they had a belief in God. When Columbus first discovered the Bahamas, he forced the natives of the islands merely because he felt they should be Christians. When the English settlers came to the New World on the Mayflower, they initially sought the help of the peoples there, but eventually would drive them out.

They would do so because they believed that they were superior and should have the land. When Manifest Destiny took hold among Americans in the 1840's the US stormed across the continent, and took lands that the original peoples of the southwest had, and even took land from Mexico in the process. This intense desire to gain land enabled the Americans to have an excuse, as national pride was on the line in acquiring these lands.

Ironically enough, blacks became slaves because one man wanted to free the Indians. According to slave owners, the blacks would be easier to locate becuase of the color of thier skin, and we wouldn't be messing with the local population, and because the Indians weren't used to the diseases of the Europeans, and so they tended to become sicker, or die when around the Europeans.

Slavery became justified because it became almost common knowledge at the time that the bible said slavery was OK, and just that in the south in slave days it was just OK to have blacks as slaves. According to them it was good for business, and it was cheap labor, so who cared. Luckily it was the view of the northern states that slavery should be outlawed. Although Lincoln could have cared less about ending slavery, he did it because it was good for the country.

World view is an amazingly strong thing. It can make us do things that others would find reprehensible because of how one was raised or the culture they were brought up in. World-view is what shapes our actions, and how we see the world, and why it can be hard for someone to do the right thing if they have grown up knowing that the right thing may have been not so right. That is why the world is such a complex place because of the intense desire to protect and defend a certain world-view.

Learn more about this author, Cody Hodge.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.